Intense battle erupted on Saturday morning in Somalia in an area between Lego and Yaqbariweyne in the Bay region (south) when Al-Shabaab forces ambushed Ethiopian TPLF and Somali government troops heading to the capital, Mogadishu, residents said.
Sheikh Muqtar Robow Abu Mansorsaid, Al-Shabaab spokesman told reporters in a teleconference that their troops were responsible for the attack, claiming that they chased away the country’s troops and their Ethiopian Woyanne allies.
“This morning Allah’s forces waged an ambush attack against Allah’s enemy,” Abu Mansor said.
“One of our solders died and four others were wounded but we chased them and forced them to retreat,” he added.
Heavy weapons and machine guns could be heard in the surroundings, according to residents.
“Early in the morning we heard sounds of heavy weapons and we thought of a battle between Ethiopian TPLF and Islamist forces Somali Freedom-fighters” Anab Mumin, resident in Lego told APA by phone.
Abdirihim Hussein another resident near Yaqbariweyne told APA “I was near the battle area and I narrowly escaped. I thought I would die.”
South and central Somali regions have been the hardest-hit with insurgents’ attacks, including roadside bombing and guerrilla war against the government forces and their Ethiopian TPLF allies.
Somalia is plunged into anarchy since the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, when warlords used their clan based militias to remove him.
Thereafter , they started to fight one another as they could not agree on leadership.
As a result, many Somalians have died and others are displaced in their own country.-APA
After spending eight years behind bars in Ethiopian jails for presumed links with the terrorist Al Qaeda network, eight Kenyans speak out about their terrible ordeal.
After being secretly detained in Ethiopia for more than one year, eight Kenyans were allowed to return home. These men were arrested in January of last year soon after the collapse of the Islamic courts in Somalia.
Accused of being members of Al Qaeda, they were detained without being officially charged of any crime, and were not allowed to contact a lawyer before being sent to Ethiopia. Thirty three year old Kassim Moussa, returns to his village of Bongwe, 30 km south of Mombasa. He lost everything and can only now help his parents to cultivate their land.
Today Kassim Moussa’s father explains to the village how he had no news about his son or his whereabouts for over a year. The meeting is organised by the Muslim forum for human rights who accuses the Kenyan government of deporting illegally its own citizens. All these ex-detainees are telling the same story. They recount how they remained handcuffed and blindfolded for months.
Bashir Hussein shows wounds he says he incurred while being detained by Ethiopian soldiers TPLF Thugs and also while he was interrogated by CIA agents. These accusations have been denied by the Ethiopian government Woyanne. Some ex-detainees had to be admitted to hospital upon their arrival here. The Muslim forum for human rights have gathered their testimonies in order to sue the Kenyan government but Kenyan authorities still consider that their innocence has not yet been proven.
Listen the report: [podcast]http://www.voanews.com/english/figleaf/mp3filegenerate.cfm?filepath=http://www.voanews.com/mediaassets/english/2008_10/Audio/Mp3/LCR%20Heinlein%20ETHIOPIA%20NGO%20LAW%202350155%20%20329P%20gg.Mp3[/podcast]
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Ethiopia’s government The Woyanne dictatorial regime in Ethiopia is coming in for fierce criticism over a draft law before parliament that would prohibit or criminalize many activities of foreign charities and NGOs. VOA’s Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports the bill is almost certain to pass easily in a legislature overwhelmingly controlled by Ethiopia’s ruling party.
Ethiopian Woyanne officials have told western diplomats that parliament will approve a proposed Charities and Societies Proclamation within weeks. The bill would give the government supervisory powers over non-governmental organizations that receive at least 10 percent foreign funding, including money from Ethiopians living abroad.
The text before lawmakers prohibits such NGOs from promoting democratic or human rights, the rights of children and the disabled, and equality of gender or religion. Violators could face up to 15 years in prison and fines up to $10,000.
Foreign NGOs have reacted with alarm to the bill, saying it could make it impossible for them to operate in Ethiopia. A group of ambassadors in Addis Ababa recently warned Ethiopian Prime Minister Woyanne dictator Meles Zenawi that passage of the Charities and Societies Proclamation could mean the loss of untold millions of dollars in desperately needed aid.
The organization Human Rights Watch issued a statement urging Ethiopia’s lawmakers to reject the bill, calling it ‘repressive’. But the leader of an opposition parliament faction, Bulcha Demeksa, said he and like-minded lawmakers are powerless to stop it in the face of an overwhelming ruling-party majority. “The government is going to silence the NGOs and their leadership when they speak about human rights, when they spoke about democratic rights, when they spoke about giving democratic education to the citizens.”
He continued, “The government does not like it, that is why the government wants to silence them, and I am very sorry about it, I am very hurt about it. I wish I could do something about it, because practically all the NGOs are doing something good for this country.”
A senior adviser to the prime minister dictator, Bereket Simon, says NGOs will still be welcome to help fight poverty. But he says the bill is designed to prevent foreign interference in the country’s political affairs. “We need foreign NGOs to participate in poverty alleviation programs and to participate in development works, but we definitely believe the political realm must be left for Ethiopians. That is the prerogative of Ethiopians.”
Tom Porteous, the U.K. country director of Human Rights Watch says laws governing the behavior of foreign NGOs can be positive. But he says the draft before Ethiopia’s parliament is contrary to the country’s constitution. “NGOs should not be immune from accountability, and we would support efforts by the Ethiopian Woyanne government to increase the accountability of civil society organizations.”
Porteous added, At the same time, many other countries in Africa have managed to achieve this without criminalizing human rights activities for example, and in fact this law contravenes not only international and regional African treaties on freedom of association and so forth, but it actually violates Ethiopia’s obligations under its own constitution.”
Ethiopian Woyanne officials, however, say they see nothing repressive or unusual about the draft law. Bereket Simon says NGOs who stay out of Ethiopia’s internal affairs should have nothing to fear. “It is not repressive, because this is a matter that is between Ethiopia and foreigners, so foreigners have their domain, we have our domain. As a sovereign state which runs Ethiopia, we are designing our own law, and any foreigner who is ready to work in Ethiopia should come and see the law, and if it feels comfortable with the law, it can continue to work. If he does not feel comfortable, then we are not going to force them to work here.”
Bereket says the law is aimed partly at what he described as ‘NGOs collaborating with terrorist organizations’. He declined to elaborate.
There are an estimated 3,000 NGOs in Ethiopia. Their combined budgets are believed to be more than $1 billion a year.
Last year, Ethiopia’s Woyanne government expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross, charging its workers with providing assistance to rebels fighting for independence in the country’s Somali region known as the Ogaden. The ICRC dismissed the allegations.
Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous nation, and one of the world’s largest recipients of international aid. The United States is the largest single donor to Ethiopia Woyanne, with aid donations this year expected to top $800 million.
The Woyanne regime in Ethiopia has made an agreement with a retired British colonel to study better ways of training Woyanne thugs (death squads) to control riots. The study was done by Colonel Michael Dewar, who is a former Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and defense expert.
The colonel’s riot control expertise comes from his several tours of duty in Northern Ireland where the British had long experience in suppressing the civilian population by crackdowns on public meetings, parades, home searches, street harassment and detentions of IRA suspects for prolonged periods.
Dewar’s report says that the riot control troops in the country “at present spend most of their time waiting for riots to happen.” Colonel Dewar organized a think tank that met regularly at the Ethiopian Embassy in London. See Teferra Waluwa’s letter and Col. Dewar’s report here.
A convey of Ethiopian military troops Woyanne henchmen which has left the Somali capital Mogadishu, and heading towards Afgoi district which is some 30KM from the Somali capital Mogadishu came under a remote control landmine explosion just some 18KM before reaching the actual destination on Sunday morning.
The explosion was an earsplitting one, and its sound was heard almost in the entire neighborhood.
“The Ethiopian troops TPLF thugs were traveling in 14 military trucks and immediately after the explosion they have alighted from the trucks and opened heavy fire in all the directions, they have also cordoned off the road for a brief time and later reopened it, I have seen them from very far collecting the bodies of 3 of their soldiers but what I can verify is that 1 of their military trucks was burnt to ashes” said Hassan Kassim a resident in the area.
It is the same, same place where Ethiopian military soldiers TPLF mercilessly butchered more than 80 innocent Somali civilians traveling along the road which links Mogadishu and Afgoi district.
Since the arrival of the Ethiopian troops TPLF in Somali particularly in the capital Mogadishu backing the Somali transitional government they have encountered uncountable attacks and roadside bombs.
Somali has not had effective central government for nearly two decades since late Mohamed Siyad Bare was overthrown from power in 1991.
